Clay Ganesha idol-making workshops at B.Ed colleges in Telangana

This will be in addition to their yearly free distribution of clay Ganesha idols.

Hyderabad: Adopting a ‘teach the teacher’ model, the Telangana State Pollution Control Board (TGSPCB) will conduct clay idol-making workshops at B.Ed colleges across the State. This will be in addition to their yearly free distribution of clay Ganesha idols.

While earlier these workshops were conducted for school students, this year, officials plan to target college students who will soon become teachers. One teacher-training college will be selected in each of the 33 districts for this purpose.

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“These college students will go for their internships soon to around 10-15 schools. The goal is to provide them with the essential skills needed to teach their students, not just during these internships but also in the future when they start working,” says TSPCB Social Scientist, WG Prasanna Kumar.

The key focus of these workshops, apart from creating awareness of the environmental impact of Plaster of Paris (PoP) idols, is to introduce resource management. Since these idols are made from natural resources, Kumar believes that teaching students to use them effectively is vital for conservation. “By making them work with clay and mud, we also hope to reconnect them with nature and emphasize that it is not dirty,” he adds.

Free distribution of clay idols:

Every year, in the lead-up to Vinayaka Chaturthi, TSPCB distributes clay idols for free to mitigate the pollution in local water bodies after immersion. It was the first government organisation to implement this, leading every civic department to adopt the initiative.

Last year, they distributed around 1.5 lakh idols. According to officials, a tender was released last Saturday, and a similar number of idols as last time are expected to be distributed this year as well.

When asked if their initiative has yielded any result over the years, Prasanna Kumar says it made a huge difference. “When you see all the small idols that are placed in front of the big colony idols during visarjan, you will notice that most of those are clay idols. This is indicative of the change,” he says, adding that PoP idol sales have also come down.